Support. It was such an over-used word. Fry had already heard it too often during the past week. At least when Ben Cooper used the word, it was with some sincerity. Here, in this overheated room, looking out over the back of the football ground, it had the dead sound of a curse.

‘Diane, we’ll understand if you say you’ve moved on and you don’t want to testify,’ added Blake. ‘But there are things we can do. A victim can agree to interview without any commitment to give evidence.’

‘Don’t keep calling me the victim.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Look, you might not be sure about this until you re-read your own statement. That’s often what we find. A woman has tried to forget the incident, put the trauma behind her – of course. But then she goes back and reads the statement she made at the time, and she changes her mind. She agrees to go ahead and give evidence in court.’

Blake was starting to look a bit flustered at her lack of reaction. He glanced at Superintendent Branagh, as if appealing for support. But Branagh’s face was impassive. For once, she wasn’t weighing in to put pressure on Fry.

And there must be a reason for that. Fry knew that everything Branagh did had a reason. There might be even more going on in this room than it seemed.

Fry wiped her palms on the edge of her jacket, then tried to disguise the gesture. Too much of a giveaway.

‘In court, you can have a screen, if you want,’ said Blake, leaning forward earnestly. ‘So that the accused can’t see you and you can’t see him. We often take victims into court to show them where they’ll give evidence from, and where everyone sits. We might not need to do that for you, obviously. But you understand what I’m saying? We bend over backwards to make it easier.’

‘Easier?’

‘Less difficult, then.’

Rachel Murchison would be from a sexual assault referral centre. Fry knew the police would already have examined the stored exhibits for blood, saliva or semen traces, with the help of the Forensic Science Service. They might have found the tiniest speck of sperm on a tape lift from her clothing. Without statements from independent eye witnesses, the police were reliant on forensic science.

But in rape cases, juries were the problem. They were notoriously sceptical of a rape victim’s behaviour if she didn’t put up a struggle, didn’t make her refusal absolutely clear, didn’t rush straight to the police, didn’t tell the full story straight away.

The research said that rape trauma syndrome could make a victim seem unmoved by the experience as she gave evidence in the witness box. But the general public had never read the research. They had expectations of a rape victim – that she should resist physically, make non-consent very plain, that she should rush off to the police station, give a full and consistent account of everything that happened. Without expert witnesses, juries sometimes weren’t deciding cases on the facts, but on preconceived notions.